Zbigniew Brzezinski, ex-White House adviser and influential foreign policy expert, dies

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the combative, visionary foreign policy intellectual who helped bring Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976 and then guided him through a series of international crises that contributed significantly to Carter’s defeat at the polls four years later, died on Friday night. He was 89.

“My father passed away peacefully tonight” his daughter, Mika Brzezinski said on her Twitter account.

The Polish strategist became a lightning rod for criticism over the roles he played in the Iranian hostage crisis, a broad but unrewarding diplomatic confrontation with the Soviet Union, and Carter’s innovative but unevenly implemented human-rights policy.

Brzezinski’s admirers focused on achievements that included the full normalisation of US relations with China, an expanded American role in the Middle East that produced an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and skillful involvement behind the scenes that kept Poland’s 1980 Solidarity revolt against Communist rule alive and effective.

The author of more than 30 crisply argued books, Brzezinski gradually moved away from the strident advocacy of military power and the need to show resolve that made his reputation as an anti-Soviet hawk during his tenure as Carter’s national security adviser.